The Dutch Table

Discover Holland's best kept secret: its food! Our cuisine is not well known but nonetheless exciting, flavorful and full of history. The Dutch Table is your online resource for traditional Dutch food recipes, and is growing steadily.
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Sunday, July 8, 2018

In a traditional Dutch household, as soon as dinner is over, the plates are cleared (although some families will also use their dinner plate for dessert, so as to save washing more dishes!) and the various cartons of vla, yogurt, pudding or pap make their way to the table. Very often, a variety of choices are available as each family member tends to favor one flavor of another: I for one loved hopjesvla, but could also appreciate a creamy vanillevla or chocoladevla!

Together with the dairy cartons, a smaller glass bottle will make its appearance. It contains a thick, red liquid. Now watch the people at the table. As the bottle is passed from one person to the other and makes its way around the table, those that have not yet been able to pour some of its contents on their dessert, guard it closely to make sure nobody takes more than their share, and that there is something left for them! And no wonder, because this small bottle holds Tova, a puddingsaus, also known as "toversaus", magic sauce, because of its name and its possibilities to change your dessert into something even better!

Source: Albert Heijn

Nowadays, Tova puddingsaus is called dessertsaus, and is meant specifically for that: ice cream, vla, pap, yogurt and even pancakes. Tova has been around for almost a hundred years and is still popular today. It used to be produced by the De Betuwe fruit company from Tiel, where Flipje the mascot came from. Nowadays, Tova is produced by the international Hero company.

The sauces used to come in many flavors: strawberry, cherry, chocolate, banana.....but the most favorite sauce tended to be the red berry sauce, rode bessensaus. It was sweet and slightly acidic at the same time, perfect for cutting through sweet dairy desserts, and often specifically served with farina pudding, griesmeelpudding or buttermilk pudding, karnemelkpudding. Nowadays, Hero limits its production to strawberry, raspberry, caramel and chocolate.

Bessensaus is traditionally made from aalbessen, fresh red currants (ribes rubrum), but can also be prepared with a mixture of red currants, strawberries or raspberries, if currants are hard to come by.

Pick the stems from the currants, wash the berries and add them to a thick bottomed pan with the 1/4 cup of water, sugar and the vanilla bean. After ten minutes, remove the vanilla bean, split it down the middle and scrape the seeds out. Return the seeds to the pan, as well as the remainder of the vanilla bean. Simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, until the berries have softened and released their juice.

Remove the vanilla bean. Pour the berries and the liquid into a sieve and use a spatula or wooden spoon to squash the berries through the sieve into a bowl. The seeds and skins remain in the sieve, and you should have a thick berry sauce in the bowl. If the sauce is too watery, return it to the pan and reduce it, or thicken it with a little bit of cornstarch. If you dip a spoon into the sauce and are able to draw a line on the back of the spoon with your finger, it is thick enough.

Taste the sauce and decide if you want it sweeter. If so, add a bit more sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved. You can now freeze* the sauce, or keep it in the fridge, but no longer than ten days. With any sign of spoilage such as mold, discoloration or bubbly foam, discard the sauce immediately.

Makes approximately 2 cups (500 ml) of sauce, depending on reduction.

* I split the sauce between several small freezer jam jars and keep the sauce in the freezer. I only pull a small jar at a time and let it thaw in the fridge before using it for dessert. This will help keep your product fresh.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Easter always leaves me with a number of boiled eggs in the fridge. They're either left over from the egg hunt, from Easter breakfast and brunch, or from me just boiling a bunch of eggs because...well, because it's Easter. And with Easter, we have eggs. Lots of 'm.

It's not entirely accidental that I end up with an overload of boiled eggs.....because I love, love, love egg salad! I eat it on roggebrood for breakfast, for lunch with slices of tomato, cucumber and with pickles, or if there is any salad left, as a midnight snack with a couple of crackers. It started out as a way to use up the leftover eggs (yay Dutch thrift!), and now it's become a tradition, a little treat, that I look forward to every year.

Of course, as a Dutch person, I am not unfamiliar with eggs. We eat boiled eggs with our breakfast, use eggs for our slagroom cakes, make eierkoeken from Brabant, and use the whites for Haagse blufdessert. One of our traditional drinks, advocaat, is alsomade from eggs. Eggs also replace meat during Lent meals, and even is the main ingredient in dishes like Kamper Steur and uitsmijters. According to this article, the Dutch consume almost 200 eggs a year - and after seeing how many dishes involve egg, I am not surprised!

And we do love our prepared salads! Ham salad, celery, shrimp, chicken curry, egg salad....there's a large variety of ready made salads that you can buy from the grocery stores, supermarkets or even at the butcher's or the fish stall. It's considered gezellig if, in the evening, when everybody is gathered around the television, or playing a board game, to bring out a board with several salads, a piece of paté or liverwurst and several crackers to enjoy these treats!

If you are starting this recipe from scratch, add the eggs to a pan of cold water. Bring to a rolling boil, put a lid on the pan and shut off the heat. Leave the eggs in the water for a good 10-12 minutes, then pour off the hot water and shock the eggs with cold water. Place them in the fridge if you are planning on using them later: eggs can be boiled up to two days in advance and be kept in the fridge for up to a week. Boiled eggs can be kept out of the fridge for a maximum of two hours, according to the CDC.

Peel the boiled eggs and cut them down the middle, lengthwise. Pop the yolks into a separate bowl. Chop the egg whites into small cubes. Break up the yolks finely with a fork, then stir in the mayonnaise and one tablespoon of heavy cream or milk. Mince the white part of the onion, and a little bit of the green, and stir that into the egg yolk mixture together with the mustard. Give it all a good stir. Now taste, and decide how much salt and pepper you'd like to add, if any.

Carefully fold the creamy yolk mix with the chopped egg whites. Taste again, to see if you need to adjust the salt and pepper. If not, you're set! Finish with sprinkling a little bit of chopped green from your spring onion tops.

This is the basic recipe for egg salad. You can substitute the cream for yogurt, only add half the mayo and half sour cream, add chopped pickles, shredded apple, or dust it with paprika or curry, fold in tiny cubes of ham, add more mustard, put a splash of sriracha in it.....it's up to you!

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Today, March 14th, is Pi Day. I usually pay little attention to all these "Today-is-Fill-In-The-Blank-With-A-Food-Name-" days. Should not every day be pie day?! So, initially I had not planned to write about this mathematical merriment, until I realized there was a Dutch connection. If the pie part did not catch my attention, the Dutch link surely did. Read on!

So, the first calculation of π was carried out by the Greek mathematician Archimedes somewhere around 250 BC, who determined it to be 3 and a little bit after the comma, more accurately speaking "less than 3 1/7 but greater than 3 10/71". Over the next several centuries, other digit crunchers added more numbers to his initial calculation. The big breakthrough happened in 1600, when Ludolph van Ceulen calculated the first 35 digits of π. This mathematician and fencing instructor, a German-born Dutchman, spent most of his life calculating the numerical value of the number pi, and even having it named after him (Ludolphian number), and writing papers and books about it. His amazing 35-digit approximation to pi is even engraved on his tombstone in Leiden.

How interesting is that! Not having enough to do with calculating numbers, raising kids and teaching fencing, Van Ceulen also spent time posing problems and solutions to other mathematicians. One of these challenged peers was called Goudaen (meaning from the city of Gouda), of which you can read more here.

So while I was trying to figure out who this Goudaen is, I was distracted by something else. It appears that the city of Gouda happens to house the oldest herberg, or inn, known in the provinces of South Holland. The hotel is calledDe Zalm (The Salmon). It was established in 1522 and back then was called De Ouden Salm. It had a gilded salmon on the top of its roof that blew off during a storm but that has been restored to its former glory since.

Never mind the salmon....imagine my
surprise when I learned that Kralingseveer, by Rotterdam, housed the busiest and
largest salmon auction during the 1800s and 19th century. Apparently, our rivers were riddled with salmon during that time! Who knew?! After the
industrialization, the rivers in the Netherlands became too polluted and the
salmon pretty much disappeared, which was around 1890. The fish auction at the
Kralingseveer was finally demolished in 1932 because there was no more salmon to auction off. Sad, sad, sad state of affairs.

So in honor of Pi day and as a tip of the hat to Ludolph van Ceulen I am celebrating with a warm, fishy salmon pie for lunch. It's different from Aaltje's recipe from 1857 which used pistachios and fresh salmon. Our salmon pie used to be an easy-to-make, safe standby for many long study nights during my college years, and was typical fare for many of us surviving on a budget during those years. Nowadays, it has practically disappeared from the student's culinary scene, much like the salmon from the rivers. Which is a shame really, it's worth a shot! Some people add pineapple and corn, but I prefer this rather simple approach.

Zalmtaart is also good eaten cold for lunch, with a
glass of cold milk.

Zalmtaart

1
can of pink or red salmon (14.75 ounces)

1 package Boursin cheese with garlic and fresh herbs (5.2 oz)

1
small shallot

1 tablespoon bread crumbs

3
tablespoons red and green pepper dice (or small can of Southwestern corn)

3 eggs

1
sheet puff pastry

Fresh
parsley

Drain
the salmon and break the meat into big pieces, picking out the skin and bones. Beat
eggs with half of the cheese. Chop the shallot and fold into the eggs. Roll the thawed puff pastry out in 9 inch pie form, poke holes in pastry with a fork, and cover with 1
tablespoon of breadcrumbs or panko. Distribute the salmon chunks over the bottom, and pour eggs on top. Break the rest of the cheese over the egg. Lastly sprinkle the bell
peppers on top, or the drained corn if you're using it.

Heat
the oven to 400F and bake the salmon pie in 20 minutes until done (the egg will be solid). You may finish it under
the broiler to add some color to the top. Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley
just before serving.

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Friday, December 22, 2017

If you grew up in the Netherlands during the eighties or nineties, you probably remember the sneeuwster cakefrom Maitre Paul. This Christmas dessert consisted of a light sponge cake filled with a layer of sweet whipped cream, and a generous layer of advocaat, the Dutch spiked eggnog. The upper layer of cake was split in eight portions, marking a star, and dusted with powdered sugar, hence the name: sneeuwster, or snow star. Although the flavor profiles of the cake are very nice, it was not always a popular item at the dinner table back in those days.

Part of the reason was that Maitre Paul was not a maitre per se, nor an artisan baker of any kind: it was the name of a baking factory/company from Tilburg that made frozen cakes, to the amount of 40,000 baked products, a day! The focus was therefore on production, on ship-ability, and on ensuring that the cakes made it to the many supermarkets around the country in one piece, and not so much on top notch quality and artisan skills. The other reason why sneeuwsterren were not always popular was because of the advocaat flavor** - it tends to be more favored by the older generations than with young people or children. Many of us who grew up during that time dreaded the announcement of the dessert at the Christmas table - (please let it not be another sneeuwster!) - and were secretly hoping for a Viennetta or a good old-fashioned apple pie.

But, as so often happens, because sneeuwsterren were so popular during that time because of convenience and its novelty aspect, it has come for many to be a traditional Christmas expectation and holds special memories. And even though this was never baked at home, but purchased frozen at the store and thawed in the refrigerator, it still marks a significant memory for many. And as easy as it is to make, there is no reason why you shouldn't perpetuate this memory, but this time with a homemade cake!

Beat the four eggs and the sugar at high speed until it's tripled in volume and its color is a pale yellow, full of air and falls off the beater in a thick ribbon. Sift the flour and the corn starch together and carefully fold in into the airy batter. Butter and flour a round 9 inch (23 cm) baking mold, carefully pour in the batter, and bake it on the middle rack for about 30 minutes. If a toothpick comes out clean, it's done. Remove and cool.

While the cake is baking, crack your 10 eggs. Separate the egg white from 7 of the yolks and save it for meringues, schuimpjes or omelets. Mix the egg yolks, three 3 eggs and the sugar in a mixer on high speed until foamy and thick, much like your batter for the cake, and then slowly add the brandy until it's fully absorbed. Get a double boiler on the stove (or place a bowl on top of a saucepan with simmering water), and add the eggy mixture, then start stirring. It is important that you stir frequently to distribute the heat evenly, as well as to avoid the bottom of the bowl cooking the eggs. If the water in the saucepan gets too hot, you may well scramble the eggs!

The heat will thicken the eggs into a custardy consistence. Temp the egg mixture regularly as you want to bring it up to 160 F/ 70 C. At this temperature the egg yolks will consolidate, as well as kill all harmful bacteria. It will take careful stirring and careful measuring - it's okay to pull the advocaat at 155 F / 68 C as there will be some carry over heat. Pour the advocaat in a bowl that you can cover with plastic wrap (push it down onto the advocaat so that it doesn't get a skin) and let it cool.

Whip the heavy cream with the powdered sugar. Give it a quick taste to see if you want it sweeter!

Slice the cooled cake in half lengthwise. Spread the whipping cream on the bottom layer, making sure to make a slight mound in the middle. Place this in the freezer, while you make four six inch (15 cm) cuts into the top (see picture) part of the cake, leaving the bottom 1/5 inch uncut. I used a bench scraper for this but it will work just as well with a knife - just try to get clean cuts without much tearing.

Pull the cake from the freezer and add one cup of advocaat, spreading it out over the top of the whipped cream, again making a hill in the middle. Place the top layer of the cake on top. Because of the hill of advocaat and whipped cream, the lines you cut should open up a little bit and make it look like a star. Put the whole thing back in the freezer for another half hour. Cooling it down rapidly and partially freezing the cake will make it easier to cut into presentable slices later.

Now you have two choices - either you leave it in the freezer for serving later in the week, or you serve it the same day. If you want to make this cake ahead, pull it about an hour later, wrap it with plastic wrap and put it in a cake container, and put it back in the freezer. Pull it the day you want to serve it, in the morning, and let it thaw in your fridge for at least two hours before you serve it.

Right before you serve the cake, sprinkle it with powdered sugar. I added christmassy looking sprinkles on top but that's not traditional - I just liked the look of it...

*You will only use a 1/3rd for the cake. The rest can be consumed, given away, or if you are not an advocaat fan, you may want to cut the recipe in 1/3rds.** If you don't like advocaat, or if you are making this for children, consider using a yellow colored custard or pudding instead. Banana cream, French vanilla or any other flavor that makes a pretty nice yellow star will work just fine.

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Notification: all the pictures, texts and recipes on The Dutch Table are taken, written and developed by me, unless specified differently. Please be so kind as to ask first, credit me and link back to The Dutch Table when you borrow material from this site. Thank you!